Silent Screams
by nicadaemus
Summary: Taking place 10 years after the events of Aliens and disregarding the events in Aliens 3 and Alien: Ressurection and telling the story of Newt and her further adventures.
1. Chapter 1

CHAPTER 1

"Ripley."

The word jarred her from the reverie of gazing into the vast darkness of space and the bright pinpricks of distant stars. Beyond the transparent plasteel dome of the observation deck, the deathly quiet vacuum of space loomed. It always made her feel so small and insignificant.

She turned to the scarred face of Jarvis, his dark features crisscrossed with scars, his right eye slightly askew due to some shoddy cosmetic surgery at a far flung clinic on the outskirts of civilized space.

"Captain?"

She cleared her throat. She was uncertain which made her feel stranger, being called Ripley or Captain. Today she felt most like Newt, just a lost little girl.

"Yeah Jarvis?"

Jarvis smiled, his teeth clean and straight, odd in contrast to his scarred visage. "Everything is locked down Captain, ready for the long haul home. It's just you, me and the synth left now. I'm about to bed down."

Newt raised an eyebrow, "What are you waiting for, me to tuck you in and give you a good night kiss?"

Jarvis chuckled, "No Captain, just checking on you. You been awful quiet the last couple of cycles."

Newt patted the engineer's shoulder. "Just memories. Ghosts of the past Jarvis."

He nodded knowingly. "Even out here the past can catch up to you boss. It doesn't matter how many light years you travel, it can stay right on your tail."

"Yeah, I know. I know."

Jarvis turned on his heel and shouted back, "See you in a few months!"

Newt quietly made her way through the vast halls of the free trader _Zephyr_…her ship. It had a strange ring to it, "her ship." Much like the name and the title: Captain Ripley. Her first voyage without her mother, without Ellen Ripley, had gone without incident. The cargo holds were full; the coordinates to return to Gateway Station were programmed in. The small crew was tucked into their hibernation chambers and dreaming of how they would spend their profits from the journey.

On the bridge, the dim lights cast a phantom like glow on Bishop's features.

The android smiled, "A smooth first run, Newt." He was one of the few that still called her by the old nickname, but never in front of other crew members. When others were around, she was always "Captain Ripley."

"Yeah Bishop. Maybe too smooth."

"Now that is no way to think," he said, his fingers dancing across buttons and switches as he spoke. "You did well. Your mother would be proud."

Ellen Ripley had adopted Newt just a year after their return to Earth. The young Newt had hoped greatly that Hicks would ask Ellen to marry him. The gruff Marine corporal had seemed stricken with the woman he had saved on LV-426. However, he had volunteered for another tour with the Colonial Marines and then volunteered for a top secret mission to find the homeworld of the aliens. That had been almost thirteen years ago. Nobody had heard from Hicks or the other marines again, and the government considered it a classified case.

Then two years ago her adopted mother had died from ovarian cancer. Newt shook her head as she thought about it. Man could travel the stars but could still not cure cancer.

Bishop misinterpreted the shaking of her head. "Yes she would be very proud of you Newt."

Newt nodded, "Yeah. Yeah I suppose you are right."

Bishop raised an eyebrow. "Nightmares back?"

Newt sighed. Was the android psychic? Almost a week ago the dreams had strangely returned after being gone for years. Could it be the trauma from losing her mother? Part of the mourning process? Or something different? Or just a simple coincidence.

"Yes Bishop. The dreams are back. And I don't have my mommy to scare the monsters away anymore." She felt a tear roll down her cheek, surprised by its appearance.

"I'll be up. I'll keep an eye on you. I was not planning on sleeping for the return trip. Jarvis left me a maintenance checklist and I have some research I have been working on. I'll make sure no monsters hide under your bed Newt."

She bent down and hugged the synthetic. He had been like a father to her all of these years. With the settlement she had received from the Weyland-Yutani Corporation, her mother had not only purchased the android but had him fully repaired. He had been Newt's constant companion. The perfect surrogate father.

As she lay down in the sleep chamber, he stood over her. Newt thought of an old saying her real father used to say to her so many years ago, "Sleep tight, don't let the bed bugs bite." As the chamber closed and she felt the artificial sleep overtaking her she wished that was the only thing she ever had to worry about, but she knew that monsters were all too real.


	2. Chapter 2

CHAPTER 2

Sometimes sleep was dark and empty like the black void of space. Other times they came in the dreams. Often even when waking from the void of an empty dream Newt would feel like they had been hiding in the dark, watching her. She often reluctantly stepped onto the floor, anticipating the skittering sound of a face hugger, or the sinister hiss of a full grown alien warrior.

Once she had dreamed of a dark prison world where her adopted mother had been implanted with an alien embryo. Another time she had dreamed of a far flung future where Ellen Ripley had been cloned and her DNA crossed with one of the alien creatures. Most often she dreamed of the Hadley's Hope colony, of dark twisting corridors, of traversing the forbidden labyrinth of ventilation shafts and maintenance access tunnels.

In those tunnels Newt had witnessed the murder of her brother, her friends and the other colonists. She had watched as people became incubators and food, as flesh was shredded and as blood painted the walls. The slits of ventilation covers became her window to a mad world of chaos and destruction. The colonists came to build a world, not to fight off an implacable, soulless, nearly invincible foe. She might think of them as cold blooded, but their blood was acid, and even when the colonists managed to injure or kill one, often the spilled life blood of the thing still wrought even further destruction.

Vividly she remembered how the face hugger fell off dead from her father's face and everybody thought everything was going to be okay. Then a few days later as they sat around the supper table, ironically joking about the entire incident, her father had started to gasp. He had fallen to the floor, writhing in pain, screaming and clutching at his torso. Newt thought he had been choking or maybe having a heart attack. Her mother had fallen at his side desperately trying to help and Newt had kneeled beside her. Then, in horror she had watched her father's chest explode and felt the hot blood splash across her face.

The nascent alien had screeched as it breathed its first air, eyeing her then her mother. With a lightning fast leap, it had struck her mother and ripped her throat open, more blood spraying Newt's face. She had felt somebody grab her from behind, her brother dragging her from the grisly scene as the thing slithered for cover.

They had murdered Newt that day, and murdered her over and over as she watched each life pass. They had murdered her innocence, taken away her childhood. Images had been burned into her brain for all the days of her life. She could never forget the taste of her parents' blood on her lips as she had screamed hysterically.

For days then weeks she evaded the aliens. Her doll had been her constant companion, a toy her father had given her for her birthday. Then one day, in a close call in a narrow crawlspace as she barely escaped a deadly alien claw, the thing had caught the doll. She had lost so much, her mother, her father, her brother, her home. Newt had been determined not to lose the doll. She had tightly twisted her little fingers in its hair and pulled desperately on it. The alien wrenched at it and had torn the body away, leaving Newt with only the plastic head. They had destroyed her last friend in the colony, her one comfort. She had screamed. She had cried. And she had run, back to her room she had created. Once she reached it she had collapsed on the heap of junk and sobbed. Everything had seemed lost. Then, finally, after what seemed an eternity, after it had become impossible to determine the nightmares from the reality, Ripley had come, and Hicks and Hudson and Bishop and the other Marines. And despite their bravado and big guns, Newt had known it could never be enough.

Ripley had saved her though, and made her into the daughter she had lost after over 60 years drifting in hyper sleep. The money Ripley received in a settlement from Weyland-Yutani had given Newt a rich life. Ripley had never seemed too happy about it, calling it "hush money" but she used it to give Newt everything she ever wanted.

Then one day a monster had killed her mother. Not an alien, but cancer. The woman that had defeated the most vicious monster in the galaxy could not overcome a mere human disease. Ovarian cancer had killed Ellen Ripley and left Newt without even an adopted mother.

Sometimes she was angry that she had let herself die. Sometimes she understood that Ripley had fought as hard as she could. Other times, she just wanted to die herself. But just like back on Hadley's Hope, she could not quit and could not give up. It was just not who Newt, it was just not who Rebecca Ripley, was. Despite the odds, despite the tragedy, despite the nightmares, Newt would persevere, even if she must do so alone.


End file.
